Pale under saturated low coloured pictures and video

abideenm

Hi I recently bought a D5100. All my pictures are pale , low coloured, no colour definition. Almost it has soft pinkish texture. Tried all the settings. What could be the defect. Is it the firmware. Or the lens or the sensor?

bruto

It's hard to tell without some pictures, but the first thing I'd do is to double check the settings again to see if there's something you missed, or if some previous user made changes. It is possible to change auto white balance, picture controls, and many other things.

If you do not have any pet settings of your own to preserve, I'd suggest first doing a "global reset" on the camera. On this model it's done by pressing both the menu and [i] buttons simultaneously for two seconds or more. This should return just about everything in the camera to factory defaults. It will of course lose any changes you've made. If the camera still behaves oddly after this, I'd start to worry. If you have (or download from Nikon) the manual for this camera you'll find more information.

A lens can have some effect on this, but usually not radical. Some lenses seem a bit warmer than others, but the difference is usually pretty subtle. Likewise, I'd be surprised if it's the firmware. But a malfunction cannot be ruled out here. I am presuming that you have tried viewing the images on more than one platform, and that the problem is not there.

It's not specified where and how you bought the camera, and what the possibility might be for return or exchange. The D5100 is a few years old, and it is, of course, possible that it's damaged.